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TOP language localization trends for your app, game, or software in 2023

Alconost — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 18:05:03 +0000

If you're planning to enter a new market or expand it this year but have doubts about which languages to pick for localization to boost your product's growth, we think this article will help you ;-)

In this article, we wanted to share with you some eye-catching facts and conclusions, like which language pairs were the most popular in games, mobile apps, e-commerce, and other domains.

Every year on our Nitro platform, we perform in-house research to analyze the results of the previous year and see what's happening in the translation and localization market. Nitro by Alconost is a human translation platform where all translations are done by native-speaking linguists within 24 hours. There's no machine translation involved. Let's see what our language research has to say!

The Top 10 languages requested for translation in 2022

The research is based on Nitro's 2022 client order database and shows target language popularity in Nitro in general and by various domains. This helps us reflect on trends in the translation market.

The results of this research indicates that the European group of languages remains on top, while Asian languages saw an expected rise in popularity. Learn more about these trends below.

German, French, and Spanish remain among the leaders on Nitro's chart of year-to-year changes in languages' popularity. There's a specific reason behind this persistent stability: translating into one of these languages simultaneously covers several countries.

Here's our Top 10 list of the most popular languages for translation in 2022:

German
French
Spanish
Japanese
Italian
Chinese (Simplified)
Korean
Portuguese (Brazil)
Turkish
Indonesian

*The diagram above is based on Nitro's 2022 client order database.

German covers Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Belgium. French includes France, Belgium, and Switzerland and is also widespread in many African countries.

By translating to Spanish, you'll reach Spain, Andorra, South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and some countries in North America. And don't miss your chance to think about other languages in our Top 10 list: Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, and Danish.

The Asian market's data-proven potential

Diana, Product Manager @ Nitro by Alconost:
"Here's an insight: based on our in-house research, the Asian language sector is constantly moving up in popularity among the target languages ordered. This year, it captured 50% of our Top 10 languages by order popularity, and I predict that it will be even higher next year."

In the last few years, the languages of Asian countries — primarily Japanese, Chinese, and Korean — are experiencing the ever-growing potential to become a new must-have for localization. In addition to that, in 2022, Indonesian, Thai, and Vietnamese have already entered our Top 10, as well. Why is that? Asia is a real plum for app developers, especially in the mobile gaming sector, and it's also well known for its highly developed video game industry. So, if you're in search of new markets to grow the audience of your RPG, hyper-casual, or eSports games, you should definitely consider these languages for localization and support.
As for the mobile market, make sure you've considered translating your app into one of these Asian languages if your product deals with shopping, second-hand marketplaces, food delivery, finance, streaming services, photo and video editors, or productivity. South Korea is also showing a growing interest in apps for health & fitness and education, such as apps for learning foreign languages.

Given that the Asian market continues its trend of dynamic growth, the only question is how to get on board while it's still not too late.

The top languages for translation in 2022 by business sector

Below, we've gathered some insights about the most popular languages for translation for apps, software, games, and marketing needs. We'll also share some tips on how to navigate the unique features of localization for each industry based on our experience.

Apps and software

In 2022, various apps and software were translated into 83 languages on Nitro. Of these, the following language pairs were the most popular (Top 5):

Italian
French
Japanese
Portuguese (Brazil)
Dutch

*The diagram above is based on Nitro's 2022 client order database.

Apart from considering the Top 5 language pairs from above, you may want to consider getting your app internationalized to facilitate its launch in a new market. While many people use "internationalization" and "localization" interchangeably, they have two different meanings. Internationalization focuses on the technical aspects of app development, while localization aims at understanding the specifics of a certain culture and making sure that the app's content is adjusted to it.

In other words, internationalization helps prepare your app for localization by adjusting its technical aspects and covers the processes related to the app's architecture, such as different text formats and multi-language options.

Gaming

Last year, our gaming clients translated their games into 70+ languages. Here are the Top 6:

German
French
Spanish
Japanese
Korean
Portuguese (Brazil)

*The diagram above is based on Nitro's 2022 client order database.

Games, just as with any other product, have unique aspects that must be considered during localization. Because they primarily intend to entertain, games are usually full of jokes, cultural references, and fun surprises. So, how do you keep the game's original humor in through the localization process?

First, decide whether the humor should be considered an integral part of the game or whether it can be omitted. One thing to pay special attention to is culturally specific elements, not only for the sake of maintaining the game's humor but also for the sake of your product's reputation. After all, what may be a harmless joke for some, may be offensive to others.

Second, provide notes about the context for the translators. They're native speakers of the target language but not the source. They may not know or notice that the source text contains some subtle jokes or idioms that shouldn't be translated word-for-word.

Third, think about providing translators with a comprehensive localization kit and more specific information, such as detailed character profiles, to further enhance their understanding of the context. That makes it much easier for translators to get into the characters' minds!

And finally, we recommend double-checking how the translations fit into the game and impact the overall perception of it. Linguistic quality assessment can help with this as the final step of the whole localization production. It's absolutely crucial to make sure that no misunderstandings will spoil the gamer's experience.

Marketing and e-commerce

Marketing texts, such as articles, press releases, banners, advertisements, and texts for e-commerce, were translated into 70 languages in 2022. Here are the top languages for these areas:

German
Spanish
French
Italian
Dutch

*The diagram above is based on Nitro's 2022 client order database.

Localization requires an initial investment, but if the quality is good, it'll pay off in the long run. So, how do you decide which market to choose to scale up in next when the stakes of making a costly mistake can be high?

There's a way to test the results of your market research on a budget. Let's say, for example, that your product is a mobile game. By simply localizing its description and screenshots for the app store, along with the keywords and some marketing materials, you'll be able to quickly and relatively cheaply test a market for its localization potential. If the test ends in success, your next step is localizing the game itself.

Some of our clients employ this approach before going all-in on full-cycle localization. Since Nitro has no minimum character limit, it's the perfect option for translating small texts like app store descriptions and screenshot info within hours.

Expert opinion: how to choose localization languages

Our experience shows us that, every year, the following criteria influence people's translation choices the most: the target audience's location, translation quality, price, and speed.

Target audience

The very first thing that businesses should consider when deciding which language to pick for localization is where the target audience is largest. Let's say you made an app in Venice for ordering a taxi boat. After that, you want to expand into new countries. So, where do you go? We'd recommend not rushing to Japan or France. Instead, look to the Netherlands — a country with tons of water channels!

Diana, Product Manager @ Nitro by Alconost:
"There's no magic pill when it comes to picking localization languages. No one can name a language group that would guarantee 100% success for your product to disrupt the market because each case is unique for each product team. Still, when choosing your product's localization language, I recommend at least considering the type of the product (game, social networks, e-commerce store, etc.), the product development stage (a minimum viable product or a long-existing product), and of course, the target audience."

Expenses

The second criterion is price. If your budget is limited, then the language with the lowest price will most likely be your choice. But beware of choosing a target language based on price alone, as it may lead you to strategically unwise decisions and result in costly consequences in the future. Why? Because once localized, your product may require continuous support for the market selected for scaling. That's why all long-term risks should be considered to reach cost-effectiveness. Avoid increasing your expenses in the future for no reason by trying to save on localization costs at the very beginning of your scaling journey.

Diana, Product Manager @ Nitro by Alconost:
"Most of our clients especially value that Nitro lets them quickly set up an order on their own since the platform is self-service and doesn't require any help from localization managers or other intermediaries. Nitro also saves time when calculating costs. Anyone can receive an instant quote for any language, even without creating an account."

Don't take our word for it! Use this link to calculate the price for a translation with Nitro and see how easy and quick it is, with no registration required.

Speed vs. quality

Speed and quality always go hand in hand. It's understandable that machine translation tends to be the most popular choice for a quick translation, but it may lack quality. For example, if the language pair is pretty rare, the AI most likely won't be able to provide you satisfactory results simply because it's not properly trained and/or configured by the developer.

Such radical attempts to try to save time or budget with machine translation often result in poor translation quality and will leave you spending more time and money dealing with the negative marketing consequences. That's why Nitro is a platform that features professional human translation, where all translators are highly-skilled native-speaking linguists with expertise in a wide range of business sectors.

Diana, Product Manager @ Nitro by Alconost:
"Some of our clients also list the following factors as those which influenced their choice of localization languages: the expected translation quality (mostly based on recommendations, an agency's reputation, or past experience), estimated costs, and, last but not least, the estimated speed of localization. It's a pretty typical situation when the translation is needed right away or even 'yesterday'. That's why one of our core values is to always be ready to work on tight deadlines in order to help remove the translation blocker in our clients' business plans."

Market analysis

Good research for the product is destined to save you lots of resources, including the most valuable ones: time and money. It's absolutely crucial to review the market and try to grasp what experts are saying about certain countries and their language groups. On top of that, market research provides useful insights for adjusting your future localization workflow.

Remember that your research should focus on your specific industry rather than generic insights.

Conclusion

While some languages like German, French, and Spanish remain a safe bet for localization because of the countries the language group covers, others display growing popularity, as in the case with Asian languages.

But there's no need to choose between the 'safe bet' and putting all your eggs in the basket of what's trending. Instead, make a wiser choice by doing a little market research ahead of time, thinking about your target audience, and evaluating the digital potential of the markets you're considering. In your market research, try to dig into the specifics of localizing in your product's business sector in order to avoid making conclusions that are too generalized and don't respond to your unique business needs.

Diana, Product Manager @ Nitro by Alconost:
"I recommend keeping these three key tips in mind.

First: If it's possible, use English as the primary language for the release since there will be a wider choice of translators for localization in the future.

Second: Pay special attention to the languages of countries that have good internet connections and a rapidly developing digital culture. For example, look at countries where people frequently shop online and use food delivery apps.

Third: The last criterion to consider when choosing a localization target language is whether a country has a high digital population percentage. That means that the use of computers and telephones to solve everyday problems and provide entertainment is common not just among younger audiences but any age and class. When this percentage is high in your country of choice, it's more likely that your game will be played or your app will be used."

Finally, when the decision begins to look obvious, think about your budget and timeframes again to find the best ratio of speed and quality.

Thank you for reading. We wish you the best of luck growing in a new market! Localize wisely ;-)

—

All info from this article is based on Nitro's 2022 client order database.

Since this is our first article this year, we're happy to celebrate it by providing a special discount! Get 20% off by August 1, 2023. We also invite you to check out the quality of our service for yourself!

Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have or request a consultation about Nitro via e-mail at nitro@alconost.com or by reaching out via Intercom chat in Nitro. We reply quickly!

How to Prepare a Game for Localization? 10 Basic Rules

Alconost — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 12:54:22 +0000

Should you act first and think later, or vice versa? Knowing these little tricks when designing your game could save you a fortune.

We’ve written this article as a reply to numerous questions from game developers looking to start working with a localization agency.

What’s wrong with my game? Why isn’t localization enough? How can we fix it?

Cutting corners when bootstrapping a new game is a widely-used strategy. And it might even be an efficient one, as long as you aren’t planning to grow incrementally.

However, shortly after the long-awaited local release is in the bag, most game developers start thinking about how to attract more international gamers. And sooner or later, after taking a crack at promoting their game in more countries, they come up with several ideas for localization.

Just so we’re clear, localizing a game means adapting it to the selected locale (country or region) by translating the user interface into the target language and making adjustments for cultural, religious, and political factors.

At this point, we’d like to stress that localization entails interpreting the interface, but not changing its elements.

For instance, if a game that needs to be translated into German contains jokes about an English folk character, localization handles this by replacing the jokes with other ones that are popular in Germany. However, if there isn’t enough space in the user interface to accommodate the larger size of the German text, this issue can sometimes require more effort than just localization.

Another example illustrating the scope of localization would be the translation of numbers. For example, some locales such as en-US (American English) require numbers to be written in words rather than numerals in certain cases. Other localization locales might require matching numbers with the plural\singular forms of nouns. For example, in Russian, there are more options than just “one” and “more than one,” while in Japanese and Chinese there are no plural forms at all. However, if numbers and texts are hardcoded in static images within the game, just translating the text isn’t going to cut it.

These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg — there are countless non-localization issues that can rear their ugly heads during the localization phase. Some people call them pseudo-localization or internationalization errors — big words referring to something that could have been predicted and avoided but can require serious work on the part of the developers to fix.

This is why we at Alconost have decided to draw up a list of rules for developers to keep in mind from the very beginning of the design process in order to make localization as painless as possible. Just follow these essential guidelines to get your game ready for localization with no extra effort.

1. Pre-select localization languages in advance

In our previous article dedicated to app localization workflow, we started our action list with #1: “Evaluate your potential.” And yes, we’re going to repeat ourselves here.

You might object that it’s impossible to foresee all potential locales for a game before it actually goes live. Well, this is somewhat true: first, you test the audience with a non-localized version, and then you scale up with localization. However, it doesn’t always work this way.

To start with, your game might contain so many cultural and regional taboos that it would be a no-go for the selected locale without localization, even with the most enticing narrative.

So what is the best way to predict promising locales before you start?

Analyze the competitors’ localizations. Usually, if a rival game has found fertile ground in a certain market, you also have a great chance for a success story.
Evaluate localizations by genre. For example, if you’re an indie developer contemplating the release of a retro-style roguelike, you might have a good idea of your potential locales by looking at a success story in the genre — say, Streets of Rogue, which has been localized into seven languages plus English. Another approach is to look at the question from a regional perspective. So, since video games are an integral part of Japanese culture, Japan might be a target market to consider from the very early days of a video game development.
Study the most wanted languages for game localization. At this point, you might want to take a look at our previous research published in the article “Best Languages for Game Localization.”

However, your localization plans notwithstanding, our “Rule #0” is to make English the source language if at all possible. And we recommend developing with two locales in mind from day one.

The two “default” locales should probably be English and your native language (if that isn’t English). This approach has several undeniable benefits: first, you’ll be able to translate your game later on into new languages using English as the source material, which helps ensure consistency. Second, having two languages from day one will automatically guide you through all the pitfalls of preparing for localization. Then you’ll see little difference when you have 20 languages.

2. Adjust the interface for potential languages

When building interface elements, it’s generally a good idea to plan for at least 30% extra space (or even more, if possible) for other languages. This is especially valid for short strings (menu items, UI, etc.).

However, we have an even better idea. If you’ve taken Rule #1 into account and have a preliminary long list of locales, there’s another helpful option: design your interface for the worst-case language.

For example, the German version is going to be an average of 30% longer than the English one, and the Russian version will be approximately 10% longer. The same is usually true for the Arabic version. On the other hand, traditional Chinese characters generally take up 30% less space than English texts.

When it comes to bytes, one Latin letter equals one byte, but Cyrillic and Arabic characters are twice as big, which also needs to be accounted for when planning data storage.

3. Don’t build text strings into the code

Transforming the text for localization will result in these hard-coded strings being lost. Remember this localization rule: every localizable string should be editable without touching a line of code.

Actually, all the engineering tasks that need to be performed in order to begin the localization process are attributed to the internationalization process or i18n for short.

Another important tip is to avoid building pieces of text out of smaller single words. A good example of this kind of blunder has been spotted by a Google programmer contributing to StackExchange:

String currency = Locale::getCurrencyString() + money.toString(); // creates $123

The above example showcases a problem — other languages might place the currency mark after the number.

Instead, format strings can be used that need to be localized themselves. For example:

String format = Locale::get(“currency format”); // returns “${0}” in English String currency = String::Format(format, money.toString());

The latter approach allows localizers to rearrange words within the actual format string.

4. Remember that time, dates, units of measurement, and numbers also need to be localized

As a followup to the last rule, we just want to explicitly state that numerical information also needs to be extractable from the code for localization and therefore must not be hard-coded.

You also need to be ready to redesign your numbers in the interface. For example, a clock ticking down the game’s timeline should probably be localized. The underlying motivation for this is that Western countries are mostly monochronic, which means they’re used to having time represented as a stretching timeline, whereas Asian countries prefer to have time represented as a circle.

Not to mention that the formats for dates and units of measurement differ across almost all languages.

So our recommendation is to prepare yourself and consider every detail when it comes to localization.

5. Use placeholders and formatters and make them accessible

Using placeholders sometimes seems like a good alternative to just hard-coding text when it comes to localization and text editing. However, it can be a double-edged sword if you don’t provide access to placeholders.

This issue is connected to word and phrase order that might be absolutely different in another language. So our recommendation here is: make your placeholders part of the phrase so they can be inserted in context. Here’s a little example of what’s “good” and what’s “bad”:

No: “Mommy ate “ + %num + “ apples.”
Yes: “Mommy ate %num apples.”

A short description of placeholders can also be very helpful. This makes it possible to avoid confusion when a placeholder is considered to be wrongly related or unrelated to the previous piece of text.

6. Avoid text in images

If you use images in your game, be ready to localize them too, especially if they’re enriched with text. This means redesigning the whole image from scratch.

Redesigning images and creative assets is sometimes a good idea so you can meet standards for colors and characters in your target locale. However, it’s a waste of time and effort if you’re just doing it to insert translated text.

7. Use the right encoding and fonts

Encoding issues are inevitable if you need certain “spécîål” characters that don’t fit into your string class. If your target language has an encoding mismatch after localization, it could take a great deal of time and effort to remove those awful �� characters.

The same problem applies to fonts. In particular, certain fancy fonts for games don’t contain glyphs for all languages. As a result, it might be necessary to choose different fonts for different languages. We recommend keeping this in mind when choosing a font; otherwise, you risk ending up with a bunch of boxes (□□□) instead of subtitled text.

Our recommendation is to use Unicode over ASCII whenever possible. UTF-8 is the most common and space-efficient encoding. So make sure your input files are encoded correctly.

We won’t get into more detail about this right now. An exhaustive tutorial on encoding can be found in the previous article on hunting for “mojibakes.”

8. Play with pseudo-translation if you’re ready for localization

Finally, once you’ve got all the technical aspects outlined above ready, try doing a test run. There are a number of great pseudo-localization tools available across the Web that can imitate your interface as if it were in a foreign language, including adapting text length and checking encoding and hard-coded strings.

These tools basically run a script that mimics the target language and produces a build, which then must be QA tested within the regular process as a non-localized build.

This pre-test is definitely not a panacea, but it helps a lot. And it can also be a lot of fun for developers to do a mockup with a camouflaged interface.

9. Start building your glossary early

A glossary is a collection of in-game terms and concepts that must be preserved consistently throughout the entire game. It mostly contains items, character names, artifacts, and statuses.

Maintaining consistency with the glossary across the entire game is essential. Just imagine if a certain in-game item is translated as “potion” in one place and “elixir” in another — you’ve unintentionally created an extra logic puzzle for your players.

10. Be ready to provide context

No less important than providing a glossary is ensuring that the localization team has all the context they need. In our experience, context can be established by enabling communication between translators, localization project managers, and game developers.

We realize that it’s extremely difficult for the entire development team to be available 24/7. However, during the localization phase, our best advice is to designate a representative to be your contact person — incorrect or insufficient context can really hurt the ultimate results of the localization process.

Besides, the platform for localization workflow is primarily selected based on the client’s preferences, so this communication can be conducted as conveniently and efficiently as possible.

And if the work is done well, it pays off in the end.

We hope you find this simple list of recommendations helpful for designing your games. We’re wishing you great success stories and captivated players!

About the author

Alconost is software localization service provider. We localize apps, games, videos, and websites into 70+ languages. We offer translations by native-speaking linguists, linguistic testing, cloud-based workflow, continuous localization, project management 24/7, and work with any format of string resources. We also make advertising and educational videos and images, teasers, explainers, and trailers for Google Play and the App Store.